Eternal Life (13 page)

Because, as long as the temperature stays low enough, it burns and burns but doesn’t blow. So, cooling on the one hand, but on the other, not getting too close, because you see it all too well on the video, in Cannes, or wherever that was. The fire department was cooling the tanks, but they were already so hot that they exploded anyway, and then the firefighters were standing too close, and then, needless to say, good night.

It bears mention, though, how Alois the Lift took command: hats off. Now, you should know, the fire chief gets
selected—it’s no job, no, you’re chosen. An assembly, and that’s where the members of the volunteer fire department select their chief. On account of the statutes, of course. And Alois the Lift had been fire chief for over ten years—there’s no two ways about it, anybody else, out of the question. But how he’d mixed up the gas stations, at first he thought: all over now. You’ve had a good run as fire chief.

The prospect was so depressing to Alois, though, that all fear fell away from him all at once. After nearly eleven years, that everything should suddenly be over and done with on account of five minutes. Fire chief no more, that seemed worse to him than what’d happened to his colleagues in Cannes.

Interesting, though, that’s just how people are. Of all the reasons for him to be this calm and not to make any mistakes. Because, at that moment, he almost would’ve preferred it if they’d all got blown up. A good thing these people don’t know.

And today, throughout Europe, they use the Zell video in their fire department trainings. You can clearly see on it how Alois whistled back the fire brigade that had been cooling the tanks underground. Because there stood eight men, two to a hose, and doing nothing but spraying at where the tanks were, beneath the asphalt. You have to do it in any event, even if you’re hoping, of course, that nothing in the tanks is burning.

But one thing you don’t see on the training video, and that’s what Alois the Lift saw now. Because when the surface of the asphalt turns soft and runny, you don’t see that
so easy at night, even if the fire’s got it all lit up just fine. The asphalt wasn’t exactly running off in streams, no—only if you looked very close would you’ve seen that it’d turned runny and soft.

And when Alois the Lift saw that now, that all the sudden the asphalt was turning soft there, he knew, of course, that it must be pretty warm below. The rest, well, you can see just as easy on the video.

How Alois called back his men. And then, you see how at first they only took a few steps back. And then, you see how Alois straight-out tore them back with his own hands. And then, two seconds later, at most, you see—you’ve got to picture it like how those war planes, how they can blast off vertically. That’s how the whole gas station slowly lifted into the air—vertically.

Needless to say, Alois the Lift realized now that the eight he’d called back would select him again, guaranteed, as their chief.

The Zell cemetery is only about 200 meters from the Shell gas station. To walk from the post office to the Hirschenwirt, it’s farther. Maybe it’s even only 150 meters between the gas station and the cemetery wall. But those few meters make all the difference.

The gas station, of course, is right on the way into town. Or better put, it was. And it was right where the gas station was that it started to feel like Zell. Even though the sign for Zell is posted half a kilometer before. Somehow, though, it’s a matter of feeling.

Now, the cemetery’s only a few steps beyond the gas station, also way after the sign on the road, well, in the vicinity, speed limit fifty, but anyway, believe it or not. The cemetery more or less borders the gas station, and nevertheless, the gas station feels like it’s inside city limits and the cemetery feels clearly outside.

No Zeller is going to tell you the cemetery is inside city limits because every one of them’s got the feeling that, when he goes to the cemetery, he’s leaving Zell. And even though
it’s only those couple of meters, nobody walks to the cemetery, no, practically everybody drives because you’ve got the feeling like you’re leaving Zell.

If you just need something from the gas station real quick, maybe a fuse, you’d walk, but if you’re going to the cemetery, maybe if you’ve got an anniversary of somebody’s death, light a candle, let’s say, flowers, then you drive, guaranteed.

So you can only imagine what the parking lot looked like when they buried Vergolder. All parked up, side of the road, up till the gas station, and even at the gas station itself, a few people parked among the rubble. Because it wasn’t hot anymore, just reeked still, but you smelled it all over Zell anyway. This was on a Wednesday, exactly one week after the explosion.

Now, pay attention, the gas station blew up on the fourteenth, so now: the twenty-first of September. And still, the summer heat, nobody could remember it having ever been like this. Indian summer, sure, but not non-stop like this since I don’t know when. Practically climate change. A lot of folks didn’t know, what should I wear to the funeral now, because way too warm for the black coat, and these days not everybody’s got a black coat or a black dress. And, needless to say, all of Zell came out for Vergolder, for his funeral.

And now, the next day, this was Thursday, they buried Lorenz. Because it occurred to the priest that the victim and the murderer, I mean, how’s that going to look if they’re buried together. But “bury” isn’t completely accurate, of course. Because these days when you’re burned alive at a gas station,
needless to say, not much left over for you to bury, per se. At this point, it was more of a symbolic business, but a proper funeral, nevertheless.

Now, when they buried Lorenz on Thursday, you’d like to think much less people are apt to go. Interesting, though. They all came back on Thursday, and believe it or not, all drove again, too, of course—World Cup, you’d have thought.

Only Brenner damn well walked, of course. But, then, he had to stand all penned in just like everybody else at the cemetery.

“The flowers on Vergolder’s grave still look quite fresh,” from behind him, a woman’s voice whispered directly into his left ear.

“Even though they’ve been out here twenty-six hours,” another woman’s voice whispered into his right ear.

This amused Brenner, how precisely they’d calculated, because they’d buried Vergolder at one and Lorenz at three, so, twenty-six hours, they were exactly right.

“That’s fall for you,” the woman standing behind his left ear whispered again now. And even though she was whispering and you can’t recognize a voice very easy that way, Brenner realized that he knew this voice from somewhere.

“Where do you see any sign of fall?” the other voice whispered in his other ear.

“One hell of a fall, then, twenty-nine degrees, hotter than it was all summer.”

“Hot, yes, but the fall air,” whispered the left voice, but he still couldn’t think of where he knew it from. And whispered from the right now:

“The lake air does that. Fresh breeze constantly blowing off the lake, you know how good that is for the flowers.”

“Lake air, we’ve got that all year long.”

Who does this voice belong to? Brenner wondered, and it was starting to needle him that he couldn’t place it. When he tried to turn around, though, he didn’t get too far. Because he immediately found himself looking at the German. She wasn’t standing behind him, though. He only had to turn his head a few centimeters, and there he was, looking at the German, all the way over on the other side.

Needless to say, Brenner immediately forgot about the two women behind him now. Because needless to say, Handless wasn’t alone. She had Andi with her, well, on her—he was more or less hanging onto her arm. The arms on her were perfectly normal, healthy, I mean, just at the bottom of them, no hands. And then there’s Andi, just—hanging, you’ve almost got to call it. If you took the German away, you’d have thought he’d fall straight into Lorenz’s grave. Because the pair of them were standing right up front, sideways next to the priest, on the long side of the grave, so to speak.

And it was exactly the same as yesterday now. Yesterday, too, Brenner had observed how Andi hung onto the German so tight that you’d have thought Andi wasn’t going to make it much longer himself, and then there’d be a third funeral. Even though the disaster had left him completely unscathed, and about that, you’ve got to say: as if by some miracle.

Because Andi was just sitting there in the Shell shop when Vergolder pulled in to gas up. Lorenz was back at the
gas station with Andi, keeping him company like he did almost every day. And then, just as his uncle drives up in his four-by-four, Lorenz goes out. This was all in the
Pinzgauer Post
.

And all week long, nothing else was getting talked about in Zell, of course. Nice and slow it was sinking in. And somebody always knows a little more than the next guy. Brenner had to tune in everywhere, and it seemed like his ears were hurting him now. Because, needless to say, a lot of nonsense you’ve got to listen to.

But yesterday at the Vergolder funeral, the German told him something completely different. “Something completely different” is right because she actually told him something that doesn’t necessarily belong at a funeral. You’re going to laugh, though; it happens more often than you’d care to believe that people at a funeral start telling jokes.

As his gaze brushed over the German, Brenner tried to remember the joke she’d whispered to him yesterday in the middle of the funeral. But, nothing doing, the joke was gone. And the German herself seemed like a different person to him today. For a second he couldn’t tell, was Andi hanging onto the German or was she hanging onto him, and it seemed to him almost like she was crying, although, well, naturally. He was way too far away from her to be able to say.

Now something else occurred to Brenner, though. But not the joke that the German had told him yesterday in the middle of the funeral, because remembering jokes had never come easy to Brenner. He was all the more surprised, then, that the joke he’d heard years ago at the funeral for his
colleague Schmeller should occur to him now. Because he got shot during a bank robbery, and as they were lowering his coffin, Haslauer started in on this joke.

So you see, Lorenz’s funeral was more upsetting to Brenner than he would’ve had himself believe. Because psychology, of course. And these days when you start telling jokes at a funeral, then it’s perfectly obvious. Brenner had gotten to know Lorenz, and somehow he became, I don’t want to say, well, sympathetic. But Brenner did take himself by surprise when he remembered that he was actually the one who’d told the joke.

Lorenz, that nut, blew himself up, practically suicide commando. Vergolder drives into the gas station, and Lorenz says to Andi, I’ll take care of it, and Andi doesn’t think anything of it, because Lorenz often helped him out. And besides, he was glad not to have anything to do with Vergolder. First of all, no tip, and second of all, their ongoing battle over the cigarettes, because Vergolder was always standing around the gas station with a lit cigarette.

So, Lorenz goes out, okay, grabs the nozzle, and you’ve got picture it like this, like when two children are squirting each other with the garden hose. Lorenz, from two meters away, aims directly for his uncle’s face with the gasoline. And then there’s the lit cigarette, too. Then, needless to say. A second later the two are standing in flames and so is the whole gas station.

A miracle that Andi walked away from it, well, he ran for his life, because—impossible he could’ve done anything to help.

Now Brenner’s standing there at the funeral and all the sudden he remembers that he feels sorry for Lorenz. Not normal pity, let’s say, the way you do for every human being, but more than for, say, Vergolder.

And now that Lorenz had killed his uncle’s American mother and father-in-law. Brenner himself was surprised, it just didn’t seem right to him. But it was in the
Pinzgauer Post
. Right next to a photo of Nemec.
CASE CLOSED
, it said right under Nemec’s picture. Awkward for Brenner now, of course, he starts sympathizing with Lorenz all the sudden.

And next to the photo of Nemec is one of Andi. Eyewitness report. Mandl interviewed Andi while he was still in the hospital, and maybe that’s the reason why Brenner hadn’t talked with Andi at all. Because maybe he didn’t want to be such a vulture like Mandl. And that’s why he was content for the time being with what the people were saying. And with the report in the
Pinzgauer Post
. Even if Mandl’s name was printed above it.

Just to be on the safe side, they immediately took Andi to the hospital on the night of the fire, that is, after they caught him down by the promenade on the lake. Because he was in a state of shock, of course, so much so that he’d run around half the lake. And then he resisted, shouting that he was uninjured. But, then, that, too, turned out to be true. And over at the hospital Mandl was waiting for him. He’s always going sailing with the assistant medical director, so, needless to say, he got his interview just like that.

Naturally, Andi told Mandl that Vergolder alone was the guilty party:

“Vergolder always opened his gas cap himself, even though we’re no self-service gas station.”

And a thousand times Andi had pointed it out to him. That he should kindly not open his gas cap with a lit cigarette in his mouth.

“Lorenz hung out a lot at the gas station with me. Most of the time he just sat there and smoked. In the shop you can smoke. Sometimes he’d help me out, too. But I was surprised when his uncle came in to gas up that he went out to help him of all people. He can’t stand his uncle. Me neither, of course. Got out of his four-by-four with a cigarette in his mouth just like he always did, of course. Lorenz says to me, Stay put, I’ll take care of him.”

Didn’t matter how long Brenner thought about it, still nothing stuck out to him that would’ve made him say: inconsistency.

Now, though, all the sudden he notices that Nemec’s standing next to him at the cemetery. And they’re all packed in, of course, tight as sardines. Nemec’s standing closer to Brenner now than he ever did all his years on the force, you might even say: physical contact.